Bad Art Isn’t Bad Art
As an artist, there’s a good chance that, at some point, you were told that your artwork is bad.
Opinions of an art piece being bad could’ve been from a family member, a significant other, a friend, a coworker, or a teacher.
But here’s a secret…
Bad artwork doesn’t mean that it’s bad.
Your artwork is bad!
But not really.
Often, when someone says that artwork is bad, it really means that the piece didn’t fulfill what the receiver desired. When looking at the artwork, the receiver doesn’t feel what they were hoping for and generates a miss in expectation.
What does this mean?
The judgment that artwork is bad means that the artwork itself isn’t bad, but the receiver didn’t get what they wanted from it.
It’s essential to understand this idea.
At the same time, as an artist, you must clearly understand your motivation to create art.
Why are you making art?
If, as an artist, your art is mainly to be accepted widely by the public, you need to create pieces that resonate with as many people as possible. Bad artwork would be a piece that doesn’t make people feel satisfied by it. It doesn’t matter if you make them happy, sad, angry, or depressed. The key is that the receiver will continue to want future works from you.
There’s a good chance that the creation process of the art is tied to whether it’ll generate money. Someone will see the artwork and pay you, the artist, for the opportunity — maybe even become a patron for you to continue to create more pieces of similar quality.
But, artists can also create artwork to fulfill other needs.
For me, I create my artwork as a way to express things that happened in my life and to share my emotions (in addition to thoughts). Even though people have told me that my artwork is bad, I knew their opinion didn’t mean it was bad.
It just wasn’t FOR them.
They didn’t get what they hoped for as they consumed my artwork. There was an expectation in their mind, and upon seeing my artwork, their expectation wasn’t met.
Since I create my artwork for myself, though others may enjoy it, I don’t need to worry about people saying my artwork is bad.
But…
Even though I create artwork for myself, I also try to remember that I can continually improve as an artist.
This is especially valuable as I’m in the process of editing my web novel series. As I improve as a writer, I go back with the understanding that my artwork can improve.
Though I create artwork for myself, I also like the idea of many people enjoying what I create.
I make sure that I keep in mind that people telling me that my artwork is bad isn’t because it’s actually bad, but because they didn’t get what they expected from my work.
Art is a journey
We, as artists, need to be honest about what we want from our art. We also must understand that what people say about us isn’t a fact — it’s just an opinion.
No artwork can be universally beloved.
So we need to ensure that the opinions from a viewer of our artwork are from OUR audience — not just someone passing by it. We then need to compare the opinion to what we want to get from our creations.
If the opinion is outside of what we hope to achieve, then there’s no reason to mind it.
As the editor of VTuber Life, I hope you’ll check out the other amazing articles.
If you’re interested in becoming a writer, feel free to submit an article.
I hope you’ll also check out my web novel series on YouTube. Show the longest original narrated web novel series on YouTube some love.
